


Finding Your Footing

by Stella959



Category: Avatar (TV), Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Bending (Avatar), Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stella959/pseuds/Stella959
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe where Earth is the only post-warp planet with the genetic mutation that results in bending, the future crew of the starship Enterprise discovers their affinity (or lack thereof) to the elements.</p><p> (aka Avatar bending in the Star Trek universe)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. McCoy

**Author's Note:**

> (insert standard disclaimer here)
> 
> As I am neither Gene Roddenberry nor Bryke, I own nothing you see in this fic. All places mentioned (in this chapter at least) are real but used fictitiously.
> 
> More characters will be added to the tags as they're introduced.

Leonard Horatio McCoy’s mother was from Savannah and of old money, her family having had a large stake in the docks since before the War Between the States (or the War of Northern Aggression, as some still called it). His father was a good- ol’ middle-Georgia boy, born and raised, from a long line of nonbenders who had learned to work the land with their God-given strength and nothing more. Though his mother, too, was a nonbender, her people had had waterbending in their family tree longer than they’d had their money. Bending was a strong gene in her family, rarely skipping a soul, and although she couldn’t make the water move the way her mother and brothers did, she felt a certain affinity to it nonetheless.

Thus, it was a toss-up as to whether Leonard himself would be a bender. He’d never shown much of an interest in his mother’s element, refusing to set foot in the ocean as a toddler and never going any further than the stairs of any swimming pool his parents ever put him in. He hated bathtubs and getting wet in general, although he _loved_ getting dirty.

The summer Leonard was seven was a scorcher, with record high temperatures and record low rain and talks of declaring a state of emergency. The fact that it had been a particularly wet winter and there was plenty of snowmelt still coming off the mountains was the only saving grace. Most days Leonard could be found outside despite the heat, running around shirtless and bouncing between the backyards of his neighborhood friends. Some took his affinity for the heat as a sign he might be a firebender (which sparked a number of rumors as to how that could have happened), while others just saw him as a wild child.

One day Leonard’s mother decided that, in an effort to warm her boy up to water (and by extension her side of the family), they’d take a family trip to Atlanta and spend the day at the Aquarium. Having once been the world’s largest, it had been her favorite place as a girl, and she was sure that it was just what son needed to cure his irrational fear of water.

“Now Eliza,” her husband had said as they drove up I-75, “It’s not that I don’t like a good day in the city, because I do, or that I have anything against benders and the sort. I just want to make sure you’re not going to have your feelings hurt if Lenny takes after me and never bends a day in his life.”

“Of course not,” Eliza said, never taking her eyes off the skyline as it appeared on the horizon. “I’ll love him either way, bender or not. I just want Lenny to have another chance to see that water isn’t all that scary, that’s all.”

She paused as they slowed considerably, entering bumper-to-bumper traffic as hover-cars merged from 85.

“Besides, with as much as he loves nature and animals, I’m sure he’ll take to the aquarium like a fish to water.”

###

As it turned out, Lenny’s reaction was more akin to that of a cat caught in a thunderstorm.

Oh, he had been fine as they approached the enormous, ark-shaped building that was by and large the biggest place Lenny had ever been in his life. He had kept calm as they bought their tickets and entered the main floor, which branched off into the five main exhibit halls. But the moment his mother had steered him towards the interactive tide pools he started to sweat. He all but threw a tantrum when his mother insisted he touch the _icky_ , _slimy_ cownose rays in the petting tank, only quieting after his father lifted him up and away from the tank and back into the throngs of visitors, tourists and natives alike mingling throughout.

“Why don’t we try one more place,” his mother asked, taking his hands and pulling him down off his father’s shoulders. “You don’t have to touch anything,” she promised. “But I want you to close your eyes so it can be a surprise.”

“Will it be a good surprise?” he asked, always up for something new.

“The best,” she winked, as he put one hand over his eyes and let her steer him with the other.

 **** _You sure about this?_ David mouthed to his wife as she led them both to the Ocean Voyager exhibit.

Eliza responded with an enthusiastic nod and a thumbs up as she gave Lenny a gentle nudge onto the moving sideway. David, scared of what might happen if they went alone, followed.

The scream that came out of that child’s mouth when he opened his eyes to find himself in the middle of the hundred-foot tunnel under the whale sharks startled even the belugas on the other side of the building.

###

A half-hour later they were seated on a bench at Centennial park, the only artifact in the city that remained from their hosting of the Olympic Games more than two centuries prior.

“That went about as well as expected,” David said once Leonard had calmed down enough to run off to play tag with the other patrons of the park. They had walked nearly the length of the park, finally settling in a wide-open plaza that had the Olympic rings set into the stonework.

Eliza fanned herself as she sat down. It was hot as the hinges with humidity nearing ninety percent, and she wished the only free bench had been somewhere with a little more shade.

“I honestly didn’t expect security to react that fast,” she said. “And do you think, when the security guard asked us not to come back, he meant today or forever?”

David laughed. “Probably forever until your child gets rid of that nasty fear of his.”

“That child!” Eliza laughed. “ _Our_ child is something else.”

After they had laughed themselves out they sat in amicable silence, David’s fingertips just barely resting on Eliza’s far shoulder; it was far too hot for anything more intimate. They enjoyed the picturesque scene before them, with children running back and forth across the pavement.

“You know,” Eliza said after a while. “I think today’s convinced me. Maybe Lenny isn’t a bender after all.”

“We could have spared everyone the trouble, _and_ made your mother happy, if we had just had him tested like everyone else,” David groaned.

“We could have,” Eliza agreed. “But you know they haven’t quite identified all the gene markers for bending yet, so the tests are only accurate about half the time anyways. And besides that, what would the fun in that have been?”

“I don’t know that _fun_ would be my word for me,” David grimaced. “And speaking of not-fun things,” he said, eyes drifting to the sky, “do those clouds look like rain to you?”

Eliza shook her head. “No, we’ll be home by the time those gather together enough to make rain.” Growing up among benders and along the coast, Eliza’d had more than enough practice in reading the clouds and weather.

“But you know what? That does remind me of the first time I came to this park,” she closed her eyes as she leaned back and reminisced.

“It was cloudy like it is now, some big cumulus just sitting overhead in the late morning. My mom wanted to bring my brothers to play in the fountain, and I was just old enough to tag along.”

“Fountain?”

“Yes, there’s a big fountain where kids play in the summers. It’s in the--” Eliza jumped up and found Lenny immediately, running across the giant Olympic rings in front of her. David, startled, stood as well.

“Eliza--”

“LEONARD! COME HERE, LEONARD!” Eliza shouted, but it was too late. Just as Lenny heard his mother call out and turned to look at her, the fountain came on.

Leonard was instantly drenched, and as the other children ran screeching and shouting with laughter he just stood there, getting steadily redder in the face, until--

 

 ****_WHOOSH._

Suddenly Leonard was perfect dry, and everything within a hundred yards -- his parents included -- were soaking wet.

Leonard froze, arms outstretched without remembering moving them, and looked at his mom, eyes wide.

Eliza just stared back, her face much the same.

“Well,” David chuckled. “I guess that settles that." 

 ****  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an idea I've had for a while that I'm finally letting loose. I already have ideas/outlines for most of the bridge cast, so you can probably count on at least 5-7 chapters for this work as a whole. I promise no regular update schedule but I'll try to do one chapter a week(ish). Also...
> 
> Please please please comment/review!
> 
> Every kudos means so much but a review means infinitely more! Tell me what you like/dislike/want more of, or anything suggestions and/or comments about the story as a whole! The title is also incredibly tentative at this point and likely to change, so if you have any ideas do let me know!
> 
> Thanks for reading and thanks for (hopefully) reviewing!


	2. Uhura

###

 

“Mama bended!”

She hadn’t seen Nyota behind her until after she’d opened all the doors in the house with a flick of her wrist, knocking down her daughter in the process. She bent to help the toddler up but Nyota bounced back in a beat and ran off, giggling.

“I bend too! I bend too! Mama, watch!”

Nyota ran outside to their small yard, towards the corner where a handful of dandelions had sprung up since the last time her father had worked in the garden. She carefully plucked one of the white flowers and ran it back to her mother, who had been trailing after her and stopped a few steps outside the house.

“Watch!” She demanded, and her mother did so as Nyota took a deep breath and blew with all her might. The white seeds scattered, leaving only a green stem and a happy little girl.

“I bend like Mama!” Nyota said proudly, offering her mother the spent stem. She took it graciously as Nyota watched her, waiting for a response.

“Not quite yet, Nyota,” she laughed. Her mother knew there had been no force in her breath beyond what her lungs were capable of producing, no singing breeze or stinging wind carrying the seeds beyond their small yard.

“Not today, but one day when you grow up big and strong you’ll be an airbender, wait and see.”

 

###

 

“Mama, when I’m growed up I wanna play with fire!”

Her mother paused, then laughed.

“You want to be a _firebender_?” she asked. Nyota nodded while she skipped, her backpack bouncing against her. “Now why is that?”

They were walking home from Nyota’s pre-school, where her class was a mix of children from bending and nonbending backgrounds alike. Her mother could only guess what had inspired this look of excitement and wonder in her daughter.

“Kito’s mama firebenders! She drives the fire trucks and she fights fires and she saves people too! I want to save people when I’m growed up!”

Her mother watched as her intelligent, happy, beautiful baby girl skipped ahead of her.

“You know what, Nyota? I’m confident you will.”

 

###

 

“Mama, when I grow up I want to be an earthbender like Jamal’s mama!” Nyota ran through the door shouting as she did most days, throwing her backpack on the floor and running to find her mother.

“Nyota, come into the kitchen and tell me all about it.” Her mother was in the kitchen, flipping through a new cookbook and marking recipes to try. Her father had just brought her home from Jamal’s house, and while he was upstairs changing out of his work-clothes Nyota had run straight to her mother.

“Now you want to be an earthbender, eh? Is that why you’re covered in dirt, child? Come wash your hands with me.”

“Yes!” Nyota answered as she climbed onto the stepstool her mother kept in the kitchen. At four years of age she was nowhere near tall enough to reach the counter by herself, but her enthusiasm never stopped her from trying. Her mother sent a gust of wind across the sink to turn on the water while she helped Nyota lather up her hands.

“Jamal has a big yard! And his mama, they had some new plants, a new rose bush! And she just _picked up the ground_ and _moved it_!” She paused for a breath and looked at her mother very seriously. “ _She didn’t even get dirty_.”

“She _didn’t_?” Her mother gasped, playing the part.

“No!” Nyota shouted as she ran out of the kitchen. “And when I’m an earthbender, I’ll never have to get dirty again!”

 

###

 

“Mama,” Nyota announced, “When I’m all grown I wanna bend water like Imara!” **  
**

Nyota had just gotten out of the bathtub (an inefficient but nostalgic experience that her mother was determined she have memories of) and was currently bundled up in a fluffy yellow towel.

“Imara, hm? Is she the new girl in your class?” She helped Nyota into her pajamas and smoothed a fly-away curl behind her daughter’s ear.

“Yes! Imara used to live on the beach, but they came here because her daddy got a new job! She lived in Momo-- Moba-- Momomba-- wait right here!” Nyota ran out of the bathroom and reappeared a moment later with her big puzzle-map of Kenya.

“Imara used to live here!” She pointed.

“Mombasa?”

“Yes! And Imara said in their new house they have a pond in the back, so she and her daddy can practice their bending whenever they want! And I want a pond because I want to swim not just at bath time!”

“I don’t know about a pond,” her mother said with a laugh. “But maybe we can go to the pool this weekend.”

**  
**

###

 

“Mama, when I grow up I want to be an airbender just like you!” It was a cloudy Saturday and Nyota was in their backyard helping her mother with their laundry. Though all her friends had one machine that would wash, dry, and press their clothes for them, her mother insisted in drying theirs the traditional way. **  
**

“Oh? And what makes you say that?” Their clothes were strung across two lines that ran from the back of their house to the fence that separated their yard from the neighbor’s, and her mother’s hands were stretched out in front of her, manipulating the winds to breeze through their laundry.

“Yesterday in school we learned about bending! We learned about the four elements, and balance, and even the Avatar!” Nyota didn’t notice as her mother’s hands dropped; she was too busy playing hide and seek between the drying sheets with a butterfly.

“What did you learn about the Avatar, Nyota?” Her mother had not heard talk of the Avatar in many years, and hadn’t known it was even in the curriculum for six-year-olds.

“We learned…”  took a deep breath. “We learned that he could bend all the elements! Sometimes at the same time, too. I told my teacher I wanted to be the Avatar, but she said nobody’s seen the Avatar in a long time so I’m _probably_ not it.

“But then we learned all about the elements, and I think air is the best! Because waterbenders can’t bend in a desert, and earthbenders can’t be in the middle of the ocean, and firebenders can’t bend in really cold places. But airbenders, they can bend _anywhere_!”

Nyota’s head popped out from behind a sheet and she looked at her Mama. “And you’re an airbender, and I think air is the best element ever, so I want to be just like you!”

###

 

Nyota Uhura had waited her entire life to bend for the first time. She was a happy child, but there was always something in the back of her mind that said that there was something _more_ , something _else_ , out there waiting for her just a touch out of reach. This feeling was closer some days than others, sometimes so close she could almost taste it and others so far off she couldn’t even sense it.

Then one day she reached for it, and it was _hers_.

****###

Nyota’s mother did not understand why she was called to her daughter’s school at the end of the school day, but she hoped that it was for good reason. Nyota was not the type to get into fights or cause problems at school, and she hoped that she hadn’t fallen ill.

When she arrived she was shown to Nyota’s classroom, which was empty except for her daughter, the teacher, and a very angry little boy with an ice-pack on his head.

“Nyota,” her daughter’s teacher said after their introductions. “Why don’t you tell your mother what happened at recess today?”

Nyota crossed her arms with a huff. “Kito pulled my hair! And I told him to stop, but he ran away and came back and pulled it again. I told him to stop again, but he came back so I pushed him so he would stay away from me.”

“How did you push him, Nyota?” her teacher prompted.

Nyota muttered something her mother couldn’t quite hear, so her teacher asked her to repeat what she said.

“I pushed him with the wind,” she said, pouting.

Nyota’s mother had to hide her smile behind her hands. Her daughter had bent!

Her daughter’s teacher winked at her and asked to speak with her in the hall for a moment. Away from the children, the teacher assured her that this sort of thing happened frequently enough that Nyota wasn’t in any sort of real trouble. They would continue to talk about bending and control in class, the teacher added, but an open dialogue at home about emotions and bending was always welcome.

They left the school a half hour later, after Kito’s father had shown up and been appraised of the situation by the teacher and Nyota’s mother. He had laughed after hearing the story, saying that Kito had been talking about Nyota non-stop for days and that it served him right for trying to get her attention like that.

Nyota was silent on the way home, arms still crossed and lips pouted.

“Now that we know that you’re an airbender,” her Mama said when they arrived home, “Have you decided what else are you going to be?”

“Whatever I _want_.” Nyota huffed. “And somewhere far away from that stinky Kito!”

 **  
###**  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little later than I'd hoped, but I ended up writing a little bit for everyone all week and not much for a single person until today when I finished Uhura. The next chapter will probably take about as long to get done, so probably a week or two from now. 
> 
> (I'd also like to point out that I'm completely aware of the fact that Uhura isn't completely right in everything she says about bending etc. She goes from about ages 3-6 over the course of this fic, so of course she's not going to be completely accurate at retelling stories and information)
> 
> Reviews are nourishment to the soul of a writer, and shoutout to everyone who reviewed the first chapter: y'all made my day! Please continue to leave reviews! Let me know what you like or don't like or are unsure about, who you want to see next, and/or any theories you might have about who's going to bend what (or not at all).


	3. Chekov

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild swearing in this chapter.

###  ****

It started out as a joke, really.

“Pavel, where was the internet invented?”

“Moscow, of course!”

“Marina, where was transwarp theory first postulated?

“Just outside St. Petersburg, né?”

“Anton, who created the transwarp theory?”

“I don’t remember the name, but it was a scientist in Siberia who had nothing better to do!”

Each time they threw their heads back and laughed harder than the last. They had once shared a calculus professor who firmly believed that every theorem, principle and formula had come from a great Russian mind. It had since turned into the running joke of their study group, them having proclaimed that everything from pizza to electricity had been invented in Mother Russia. It was their primary form of stress relief, their one distraction from their busy lives.

As three of the youngest and brightest that Russia had to offer, they had spent much of the last two years together in both in and out of class. Pavel was the youngest at fourteen, but was on track to graduate with his Bachelors’ the next semester in both Astronomy and Astrophysics. After that, well, he had options. There was the standing invitation from Starfleet, who had waved their age requirements after seeing his IQ test. Various international universities wanted him for everything from applied mathematics to civil engineering projects, and he had his pick of the Russia’s university system.

Marina and Anton, both more than a year older than him, would graduate with him in six months and had already made their decisions. Marina, a world class-metalbender who was the pride and joy of the engineering department, would stay on-board to be a TA while working out designs for retrofitting older model starships with the newest warp cores. She swore the best-built engines were the ones that talked back, even if she was the only one who understood.

Anton, on the other hand, would move on to St. Petersburg to further his studies on theoretical mathematics. While many questioned how a waterbender from the backwoods of Siberia ended up in mathematics, Anton would just laugh and tell them not to judge a person by their bending.

Bending, as it would be, occupied much of Pavel’s mind as he sat with his friends in their favorite cafe across from the university. The world outside was white with the snow that had moved in weeks ago and wouldn’t clear for months, but the inside was warm and cozy and just what they needed after their final exams. Pavel couldn’t help but stare at the falling snow, wondering where he would be if he had been born a waterbender like his mother.

“Did I tell you two that I accepted the position in St. Petersburg?” Marina asked as they settle down with their drinks.

“I thought you were staying here in Moscow,” Pavel said with a frown. For the last week he had been leaning towards an offer from their current university, who wanted him to stay and help spend the grant money they had just received from the Federation to redesign stellar cartography input and storage systems.

 “I will be, but that starts in the fall,” Marina explained. “I was asked to help run a STEM program for underprivileged youth for the summer. It’s the same one you’ll be work, right Anton?”

Quiet Anton nodded shyly, then turned to Pavel. “And what about you? Have you decided to give in and stay in lovely mother Russia forever or will you run away to Starfleet like you’ve always dreamed?”

It was no secret between the three of them that Pavel had a lifelong passion for the stars, but the opportunities in his home country had been more than enough to give him second thoughts over the last several months.

“You know,” Marina started. “I’ve always heard that it is very difficult to be a nonbender in Starfleet. I will of course be proud of you for going if that’s what you decide, but I’m not sure that I could do the same in your place.”

“Why do you say that?” Pavel looked up from his coffee.

“Well, you’d be outnumbered there. Twenty percent of the world’s population are benders--”

“Twenty-one point two three as of last year,” Pavel corrected. It was a statistic that he knew by heart.

“Even that, but they make up more than fifty percent of Starfleet. Not to mention the inequality of representation in the Fleet, but it would have to be a difficult transition to go there straight from the University where we have a bending population of less than fifteen percent.”

“I imagine it would be fairly easy to make friends, though,” Anton added with a wink. “Nonbenders have to stick together and watch out for their own.”

“You only say that because that’s why we’re friends,” Pavel teased. He had first met Anton at a conference for talented youth when they were seven and eight, and at the time Anton had thought himself a nonbender as well.\

“Hey! I was just a late-bloomer,” Anton pouted. His tea stirred itself as he waved his hand above his cup, a nervous habit he had picked up almost as soon as he began bending.

“Lucky for you,” Pavel shot back.

"Oh, Pavel,” Marina said quietly. “I thought you were over this.”

“It’s a fact,” Pavel shook his head. “You said it yourself. There are so many more opportunities within Starfleet -- within the entire world -- for benders than there are nonbenders, and you know it. For all we know they want me for my reputation and the press it will bring, as that’s just about all nonbenders are good for.”

“Oh Pavel, I didn’t mean it like that and you know it,” Marina said.

“And please, like the world just opened up for me since I started bending?” Anton asked. “If anything my world became more restrictive, as my parents had never wanted me to follow them into medicine until I started bending. It was the only thing people could talk about for weeks! It became my defining quality -- not my first published work at thirteen or -- or anything of note that I’ve done in my life, which is no short list -- but my bending!”

“The world has incredibly low expectations for nonbenders--” Pavel tried to explain.

“All of which are bullshit,” Marina interrupted. “And all of which you’ve already overcome, and had probably already overcome by the time you were twelve. Pavel, you’re being head-hunted by a dozen top universities around the world, not to mention every single institution of higher education in the country that you’re too much of a _damn_ patriot to ever consider leaving _unless_ you go to Starfleet and the flagship they have all but promised you in two years’ time. It would be ridiculous for you to not take their offer seriously.”

“Marina, I appreciate the support, but honestly...” Pavel trailed off. “The odds of them even letting me off the ground, yet alone putting me on _The Enterprise_ at seventeen…” He shook his head, blond curls bouncing.

“Good thing you know what they say about statistics, right?” Marina said with a pointed look to Anton, whose face was in his hands.

“Where shall I begin?” he moaned. “‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,’ ‘statistics is the art of never having to say you’re wrong,’ and, my personal favorite, “statistics are like--”

“We get it!” Pavel interrupted. “Do most mathematicians hate statistics as much as you, Antosha, or are you just special?”

“Never forget,” Marina said slyly. “That dear Anton here almost failed his first statistics class because he refused to accept the fact that--”

“Enough about me!” Anton shouted. “We’re trying to get Pavel into Starfleet, remember?”

“I don’t know why you want me so far away,” Pavel said quietly. “If I stayed on this side of the country we could visit each other over breaks.”

 _“Pasha,_ we just want you to understand that _wherever_ you end up will be lucky to have you,” Anton replied in kind.

“And they couldn’t care less that you’re not a bender,” Marina said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about that earlier, it was stupid. You’re Pavel Andreievich Chekov and you’re going to kick ass at whatever you do next.”

“Nonesense,” Pavel said, ignoring her last statement. “It only makes sense to consider--”

“--that you’re the brightest mind of the age,” Anton finished. “Marina and I could only dream of the types of offers you’re getting, and they’re coming in more every day. I have half a mind to reply to Starfleet for you the next time I’m alone with your PADD,  just so you’ll feel obligated to go.”

Pavel stared at his friend, his coffee forgotten.

“But of course he wouldn’t do that,” Marina said. “We just want you to be happy.”

“And we don’t want you settling for anything less,” Anton added. “And your family would say the same if they were here.”

Pavel just sat there, dumbfounded.

“You are my family,” he said finally. “You became my family here, and you will continue to be my family after we graduate at part ways. You’ll be my family even when I’m on the other side of the universe.”

 _“‘When’_ you’re on the other side of the universe…?” Marina repeated.

“Yes, when. Even if they don’t put me on the flagship in two years, they’ll have to let me out into the black at some point,” Pavel grinned.

Anton let out a whoop and thumped him on the back. “This calls for more drinks!”

He bought the next round of coffee for Pavel and tea for Marina and himself, and sat them on their table a few minutes later.

“Wait,” he grabbed Pavel’s hand as he reached for his mug. “First, a toast.”

Marina and Pavel lifted their mugs and waited. “To Pasha, for making the smartest decision of his life,” he paused and looked at Pavel, who was already blushing, “and to Starfleet, who won’t know what hit them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Quotes on statistics from Benjamin Disraeli, CJ Bradford, and Aron Levenstein (“statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital”), respectively.]  
> Several announcements:
> 
> 1) Clearly I can’t tell time as it’s only been three days (this wrote itself in its entirety in the last twelve hours whoops)
> 
> 2) The TV Tropes article on Russian diminutives and nomenclature is surprisingly helpful, in case that’s ever something you find yourself in need of.
> 
> 3) The tentative order for the rest of the fic is as follows: Scotty/Sulu (whoever gets written first, then the other), Spock, and Jim Kirk last to build suspense, of course.
> 
> 4) At this point I don’t think I can honestly give an eta on the next fic because of sheer variation in the amount of time I have to write every day. Just trust that I’m writing a little bit of ~something~ of this universe every day, I promise. If you don’t see anything for two weeks feel free to go bother me on tumblr (or feel free to bother me anyways).
> 
> 5) This fic will finish with Jim, but there’s a companion series for other characters (think Winona, Pike, Amanda Grayson, etc) that’s already in the works and there’s the possibility of a movie-companion piece in the future some time after that. (thoughts/opinions/suggestions for anyone else you’d like to see in this verse?)
> 
> 6) Since this will now officially be a series at one point, the series as a whole is in need of a title. I'm shit for titles so if you suggest something in the comments and it ends up chosen you'll get a shoutout, my eternal gratitude and virtual cookies for life.
> 
> 7) Every single one of you who has commented/reviewed is a beautiful and perfect human being and I wish I had a hundred more just like you. Please continue showing your support/sharing your theories in the comments, it really means so much and the comments on the last chapter are a solid 90% of how this chapter happened so fast! Happy authors writer faster and nothing makes me happier than a comment(:
> 
> (and if you read this entire note you get a virtual cookie too because I 100% did not mean for it to be a novel in and of itself, sorry!)


	4. Sulu

In this day and age, it was perfectly normal for someone to start bending around puberty. As first-bending incidences came later and later in life, scientists had linked the shift to everything from longer life-spans to alien germs to lingering radiation effects from the last war. And really, it didn’t bother Hikaru at all that he was, like, the only kid of his generation in the family who hadn’t started bending yet. Nope, it didn’t bother him at all.

Really.

Not one bit.

(okay maybe just a tad)

It was common knowledge that while bending was no longer a given in ethnic airbenders like it used to be, it still ran strong in families. If one parent was an ethnic airbender then there was a greater than 80% chance that all offspring would be as well, and if both parents were, then, well, the difference between that probability and one hundred was so small that most people just rounded (including Vulcans). These probabilities varied among the elements, in such a way that geneticists and statisticians had been studying variation in bender genetics since the first model of DNA and  _ still _ didn’t have a comprehensive understanding.

(Hikaru had once looked up the statistics after overhearing his sister ask their parents what would happen if Hikaru wasn’t a bender, and their response had just been to shush her and whisper that it was more than likely he was, even if he was just taking his time in letting everyone know)

Sure, Hikaru spent more time with his (nonbending and waterbending and firebending and earthbending) friends than with his (airbending, all airbending) siblings and cousins, but that was to be expected of a boy who just didn’t fit in (yet). And just because he spent all his free time at the beach with said friends instead of at home (or at the temple, or the airball courts, or or or) didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate his heritage: it just wasn’t a living, _ breathing _ , part of his everyday life.

 

###

 

Hikaru’s typical after-school schedule looked something like this: drop his school bag off at home and check in with his mom or one of his older siblings, then run off with the neighborhood kids to the beach for a few hours. On Mondays he had music lessons and Thursdays were for fencing, but every other day of the week (and most weekends) he could be found at the beach, having the time of his life. 

Nobody ever got in the water unless a proper  _ teenager _ was convinced to come and supervise, but most days an older sibling or two could be talked into sunbathing and supervising after a stressful day of school (when it was warm enough to do so, anyways). For them the beach was an escape as much as a place to relax, somewhere they could hang out and gossip without the wandering ears of parents.

“Did you hear about Rika Mori? Her parents finally threw her out of the house yesterday.”

“No way, I heard she ran away last night.”

“Did she finally get fed up with being the only nonbender in the family?”

Normally Hikaru tuned out the mindless chatter that the teenagers usually talked about at the beach, but he was understandably ~~sensitive~~  interested when it turned to other nonbenders. Today it was his older sister Aiko and two of her friends gossiping about one of their other friends.

“What happened to Rika?” Hikaru had only caught the tail end of their conversation, but it caught his interest enough to leave his friends and approach his sister.

“Her parents kicked her out because she’s a failure,” one of his sister’s friends replied.

“ _ Maya! _ ” Aiko not-so-playfully punched her friend, who shrugged.

“What? She never did learn bend, and it all went downhill from there,” Maya explained. “She never fit in with her family, she started getting bad grades…”

“Her problems started when she started dating Arny Tran,” Aiko said.

“Who is a nonbender,” the other girl, Nina, supplied. “If she was a bender then she never would have fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

“That is such bullshit and you know it,” Aiko said hotly. “She’s had the hots for Arny since before any of us could bend, bending had nothing to do with it.”

Aiko turned to Hikaru, who was still listening with rapt attention. “Hikaru, Rika ran away with her boyfriend because she’s in a phase of rebellion and doesn’t think before she acts.”

“What’s wrong with being a nonbender?” Hikaru asked after a minute.

“What? There’s nothing wrong with--”

“Nina said said Arny Tran was in the wrong crowd. That’s what Dad says when she’s talking about nonbenders but doesn’t want to be rude.” Hikaru crossed his arms, and Aiko could sense that her brother was starting to get upset.

“Dad says a lot of stuff that he shouldn’t,” Aiko said quickly.

“He has a point,” Nina said. “You know, nonbenders have lower graduation rates, higher rates of crime and poverty…”

“That’s because they’re almost eighty percent of the population,” Aiko replied hotly. “And they live in a society that was built on the systematic--”

“Oh my God, Aiko, give it a rest. We’re not in class, you don’t have to--”

“Shut up Maya, just because you’ve lived a life of privilege and can’t imagine living without your bending--”

“You’re just afraid your little brother’s going to end up like one of  _ them, _ like Rika Mori and Arny Tran and all the other unskilled, useless--”

“Don’t call my brother useless!”

“Why don’t you stop being such a little--”

“Leave my sister alone!”

Maya and Nina were suddenly silenced as an unnaturally strong gust of wind blew them out of their beach chairs and into the dunes behind them. Aiko looked in shock at her little brother, who still had his arms stretched out in front of him.

“Aiko, your friends suck. I wanna go home.”

Aiko nodded and silently collected her things while her friends extricated themselves from the dunes. When she reached her brother she took a step back and, with a wide sweeping motion she blew the two girls even deeper into the dunes.

"You’re right, Hikaru. Let’s go home.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College is hard and Sulu is hard to write. This is the third or fourth incarnation of Hikaru’s story and I’m still not entirely happy with it, but I need to move on. Hope y’all enjoyed it and remember, reviews make my day and are great encouragement!
> 
> Next up: Scotty.


	5. Scotty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is brought to you by bureaucracy and very late buses.

 

Montgomery Scott was a man of many names. For this, he blamed his mother.

It's (mostly) her fault for two reasons: she was the one that insisted on giving him her family name, and then she insisted by calling him by it. Now there's nothing wrong with calling a child by their given name, but a name like Montgomery begs to be shortened.

Nobody was quite sure when Montgomery got shortened to Monty, but they could all just about agree it was around the time he started bending. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell off little Monty for throwing pebbles at his sister than Montgomery, even if it broke his mother's heart every time somebody called him by that wretched nickname.

All through school, through early mornings and after-school bending lessons and dances and parties he's Monty, first that awkward little earthbender and then that slightly larger, slightly more matured earthbender, one of a dozen or so in his school. Monty stood out because he was Smart, and he was Going Somewhere, somewhere beyond the remote town in the Scottish highlands that he called home.

 

###

 

Montgomery Scott was made fun of at university for two reasons: his name (because he insisted on introducing himself as Montgomery, thinking he'd outgrown the childish nickname that irked his mother so), and his major. Like nearly every other earthbender he enrolled as a student of geology, wishing to spend the rest of his life literally, and figuratively, up to his elbows in his element.

The name lasted right up until the first night he got drunk with his new classmates: at some point his brogue becomes so dense even the most ardent of Scotsman has trouble understanding him, and that was the night that he became Scotty.

The major lasted a little longer, right up until his first meeting with his academic advisor. His advisor was a sweet older woman who reminded him of his gram, including the way that she told him that in no uncertain terms could the geology department hold everyone who's declared it their major, so he was better off digging his head out of his ass and finding something else to study. They chatted for a while before she sent him on his way with some pamphlets for earthbenders, including one about the mechanical engineering program.

(Six months later they had another row because he'd somehow chosen another course of study that was absolutely saturated with earthbenders, but at that point his professors had already become possessive and enamored and would have complained if he switched out.)

The thing about being an earthbender studying engineering was that most people tend to assume that you were a metalbender as well. There was exactly one problem with that: Montgomery Scott wasn’t.

It wasn’t for lack of trying; no, nobody would ever be able to say that Scotty hadn't tried. He'd attended every free seminar and weekend class dedicated to teaching metalbending, spent a mind-numbing number of hours in the gym staring at the least-pure metal to be found, all to no avail. As far as he can tell, it just wasn’t meant to be.

 

###

 

The semester before he graduated, Scotty was the gem of the department and had already agreed to stay on for his masters when a couple of the guys he shared a flat with, two other engineers, drug him along to a talk that was being given by some Starfleet recruiter. He went reluctantly, mostly because Ewan agreed to buy the first round at their favorite pub afterward, and he was never one to turn down a free drink.

Scott walked out of that talk a changed man.

The speaker, a recruiter by the name of Pike, talked of not just the purpose and job of Starfleet, but the opportunities that lie within for benders and nonbenders alike. It was the imagery of sprawling engine rooms and the chance to work with transporter systems and dilithium cores (every engineer's dream) that really sold him on it, convinced him that maybe Places he was Going weren’t here on Earth.

 

###

 

At the Academy he was Cadet Scott to professors and Scotty to his friends, having too many fond memories associated with that nickname for him to give it up. Cadet Scott was a passionate, model student, while Scotty taught his roommate all his favorite drinking songs.

Scotty completed his Masters and took his first steps towards a doctorate, but for that he'd need two things: shipboard experience and a focus. He loved every moment of class, every lecture and every debate, but he couldn’t quite pin down just _one_ thing to study. His Master’s degree was technically in Mechanical Crisis Management, but that was just a fancy way of saying he now knew all the easiest ways to die on a starship as a result of mechanical failures, as well as all the best (and not so best) ways to prevent them. That let him become more or less an expert in all the major engineering operations of the ship, buying himself as much time as possible before he had to specialize.

As a part of his thesis he suggested a couple of new models and procedures to replace some very dated, borderline dangerous procedures that were common practice on most ships in the ‘fleet, and before he even graduated his thesis had saved lives. That earned him a commendation and his choice of ships, and suddenly he had the world at his feet.

 

###

 

Scotty, now Ensign Scott, never gave much thought towards how he thought he would die: he had too much to get done before getting anywhere near death. He definitely never thought that his time would come on his first ship, the _Hood_ , halfway across the quadrant.

But there he was, soldering behind a panel in a Jeffries tube between decks seven and eight when the gravity just suddenly _disa-fucking-ppeared_. He didn’t know if it was just those two decks that had been affected or the whole ship, and while the loss of gravity in and of itself isn't necessarily a death warrant, it wasn’t exactly a good sign, either. Gravity goes right after lights and immediately before life support systems on the list of Shit You Don't Mess With On A Starship, and all but the emergency lights had been out for over an hour. That was why he had been sent here, to a Jeffries tube that ran below Medical, one of a half-dozen places in the ship that the chief engineer thought the problem might be originating from.

From the looks of it, Scotty had hit the jackpot. Before he'd even peeled back the panel he could smell the smoldering electrical fire that was in the walls, an electrical fire that had added stress to a circuit breaker down on the main floor of engineering, which had triggered a cascading failure across the ship.

The irony of the situation was this: Scotty had been put on the _Hood_ for this very reason. The potential for a cascading failure to be triggered by such a minor inconvenience of circuitry was a problem on several of the older ships that had been retrofitted with new warp corps but hadn’t first been completely gutted. Scotty’s job was to lead the team that would rewire the _Hood_ in phases, eventually rewiring the majority of the ship. They were just three weeks out of spacedock and hadn’t yet gotten past the planning phase, and if he didn’t take care of this immediately they never would.

He just floated there for a moment, legs wrapped around the ladder with one hand full of wires and the other grasping desperately at his tools as they drift away, when it occurs to him that he might be a little screwed. Then he took a deep breath, centered himself the way any good earthbender did when they needed to focus, and got to work.

Everything was going well, really, right up until the ship shook and knocked him well off his ladder. The force of the motion knocked him down and backwards, and as he scrambled to get a purchase on the ladder he realized that the pliers he’d been using had been knocked into the opposite direction. He grabbed at his tool belt, then realized that the pliers that were well over a half-dozen meters away by now were the last pair he had.

“Ensign Scott, you about done up there? Things are getting dicey here in Engineering.” his communicator beeped.

“Nearly done, Lieutenant.” And that wasn’t a lie: he had been almost done before the jolt, and if he could just get his hands on those pliers then they’d be set in a jiffy.

Those pliers. They were top of the line, he knew, a strong steel alloy infused with chromium to prevent corrosion. A good, solid metal that was ten... eleven...twelve meters away. He punched the air in frustration, lashing out at _those damn pliers._

Those damn pliers, that were quite suddenly in his hand.

Scotty stared dumbly at the pliers for a solid ten seconds, before the ship rocked again and his mind went back to the task at hand.

A minute later he was done and had called his Lieutenant back, who gleefully told him that the diagnostics were running clean and that the gravity would be back at any minute. It felt like the bottom dropped out of his stomach as his body suddenly had a reference point for _down_ again, and a moment later the lights popped back on.

As he made his way back down the Jeffries tube, he paused for a moment to take in what had happened. He had finally, _finally,_ metalbended. After trying for so many years, it had only taken a near-death experience to scare the skill into him. He propped one hand on the wall of the in front of him, then jerked back as if he’d been shocked. Carefully he placed his hand on wall again, this time expecting the gentle hum he now felt through the metal siding.

This was the side of bending that nobody ever talked about, the side that he’d never even heard mentioned. As a metalbender on a starship, where the only bendable material for light years around was the ship, he could feel the thousands of pairs of feet as they made their way through the ship (not his ship, not yet), the thrum of the engines on the opposite side of the ship. It was an assault on his sense in the best possible way, the sounds and movements of the entire ship felt through that single point of contact.

Now that he was a metalbender, he could feel the ship _sing,_ and if that revelation left a tear on his cheek, well, there wasn’t another soul around to see it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five down, two to go. I'm not un-happy with this chapter, but Scotty was a pain to write and I'm happy to be moving on.
> 
> Also I just made up all the science/mechanics stuff you see here, so if anything is just gapingly wrong please feel free to point it out.


	6. Spock

“I presume you’ve prepared new insults for today.”

It had started as a weekly occurrence, but by now it was almost daily and always outside of the hearing or visual range of any of their adult supervisors. Spock was used to it by now, but that didn’t mean he looked forward to it.

“You are neither human nor Vulcan, and therefore have no place in this universe.”

The leader of the bullies, Stonn, stepped forward. “Furthermore, despite your human genes, you have yet to demonstrate any talent for the one useful ability that has been known to manifest in humans. Even if you were a _bender,”_ and his use of the word is dripping with disdain and disgust, but he didn’t give Spock the opening to point it out, “you would still be emotionally compromised by the unfortunate humanity you received from your mother.”

Spock could take as many insults to himself as they could come up with, could weather them with such stoicism that Surak himself would have be jealous if he had expressed emotion, but attacks on his mother? Those _hurt_ , deep down inside, in a place and way that he had never felt before.

“This is your thirty-fifth attempt to elicit an emotional response from me.” _And I will not allow it to be the first successful one._ “Logic dictates that you would cease by now. _Furthermore,_ it appears that it has become necessary to remind you to of the definition of insanity, which is--”

“Look.” One of Stonn’s companions interrupted him. “He has human eyes. They look sad, don’t they?” Whether or not there was actually a physical response to his emotional turmoil was a moot point: it was clear that his antagonizers were going to do as they wished.

“Perhaps an emotional response requires a physical stimulus.” Stonn said, and with that suggestion his other companion stepped forward and shoved Spock. Spock stumbled back, surprised at the physical violence, regaining his balance as he came to the edge of a learning pod.

“He’s a traitor, you know. Your father, for marrying her.”

And that, that was just too much. The next thing he knew he was laying into the boy who pushed him, wondering in the back of his mind if his response would only make things worse.

 

###

  


“Mother?”

Spock stood exactly in the middle of the doorway of her study, the way he did when he needed to talk about something.

“Yes, Spock?” Amanda’s desk faced the sole window in her office, which offered both light and a vast expanse of desert to watch when she needed a break. She was currently reading on the newest additions to the Universal Translator, jotting down notes and commentary for a future missive to the linguists behind the expansion.

“Why were human bending genes not introduced to my genetic code prior to my birth?”

Well, _that_ came out of nowhere.

“Excuse me?”

She pushed back from her desk to study her son. It was the day after his fight, and while his split lip was healing nicely. His dark brows were furrowed, the way they did when he had been thinking hard about something.

“Why was it decided that I would not inherit your bending traits? Surely it would have proven fruitful for geneticists and anthropologists at the Vulcan Science Academy to have an at-hand specimen to examine the phenotypical manifestations of such genes.”

“Oh, Spock.”

She closed the cover on her PADD and gestured for her son to come closer. Already he shied away from her touch in public, but he hadn’t yet asked her to “cease such open displays of emotion” within their home. She placed a gentle hand on his arm, and although they were separated from direct contact she could still feel their familial bond strengthen through the proximity.

_confusioncuriositywonderfear_

“Your father and I certainly discussed it,” she said after a while. “At the time of our engagement, I was considered an above-average bender--”

 _The best damn bender this side of the pacific,_ her favorite instructor had once said. He’d pitched a nice little fit when she told him who she was marrying and what that meant, throwing around such endearments as _“are you out of your fucking mind”_ and _“you know it’s a fucking desert planet, right”_ before buying her a top-quality waterbender’s pouch because _“a bender should never be far from their element even if they’re far from their sanity.”_

“--and while it was certainly an idea, we ultimately decided it safest to deactivate any trace proteins that might trigger the genes.” She didn’t add that she had, perhaps selfishly, hoped against hopes that they had missed some key protein and she wouldn’t be the only bender on this desert planet after all...

Spock had no immediate response, and she hoped that he would be satisfied with her answer.

“Did you believe I would be inept?” Her son, satisfied with a simple answer? Clearly she was losing her touch.

“Oh Spock, of course not! But considering that Vulcan is a desert planet and my element isn’t what I would call abundant here, it would have been cruel to try to raise a waterbender on the driest planet in the Federation.” That was not to mention the various cultural and spiritual aspects they had considered while making the decision.

“Mother,” Spock said slowly. “One of Surak’s oldest teachings states that the needs of the many--”

“--outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, yes, I know. But you’re just a child, Spock, and you will be for a long time yet. While your childhood has been nothing like mine was, and I knew that it would be, I didn’t want you spending all your time getting poked and prodded by those goons at the VSA.”

She tried her hardest to make light of the subject, hoping that her teasing of the very institute that Spock was already dreaming of joining might distract him from the heavy subject at hand.

“Mother, I would not have complained. As the first successful Human-Vulcan hybrid, it is my duty to be a willing subject for whatever avenue of inquiry is being pursued at the time in which I am able to assist.”

“We decided--”

“It was not your decision to make.” Spock rarely interrupted her, and this time it would not be to his favor.

“Spock, dear, I’m your mother.” She did everything in her power to channel her most maternal tone of disapproval. “I made the decision when you were not here to give an opinion, and more importantly I made the decision so you wouldn’t have to.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a good shorter than the others thus far, and I apologize. I ended up liking this stopping point more than trying to force anything else onto it, but I'm not really a far of short chapters so I'll try to make the next and last chapter (!!) longer to make up for it.
> 
> And speaking of that last chapter, clearly it will feature our very own James Tiberius. While his fate has already been decided (but has yet to be completely written up), I'm interested in what your theories are about what kind of bender he should be. Leave your opinions in the comments (with a review)!


	7. Kirk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: There's a brief mention of mild child abuse in this chapter, mentioned only in passing with no real detail. Because of that and since it's only in this chapter I'm reluctant to add it to the tags for the whole fic, and I've explained exactly what happens in the end notes for those who want/need to know.

At twelve years of age, James Tiberius Kirk knew three things to be true:

  1. His brother Sam was the smartest person he knew,
  2. His father had died the day he was born, and
  3. He would never, ever, bend.



Oh, he bent in his dreams sometimes, carried a graceful flame in his hands or guided a whip of water through the air, but then he would wake up and be reminded of the very stark reality that was his non-bending life.

He wasn’t alone in this non-bending life, though, so at least he had that. His brother, four years his elder, had never bent so much as a breeze, and never would; everyone knew that bending manifested some time between early childhood and adolescence, and at sixteen Sam was long past the early signs of puberty that were usually the last hope of bending that a child ever had.

Jim, theoretically, still had a year or two for something to show up, but he knew it wouldn’t come. His mother came from a prominent line of non-benders: there hadn’t been a bender in that side of his family tree for the better part of two centuries. His father’s ancestry was somewhat less well documented, but nobody alive could remember a time when there was a bending Kirk.

So there he was, a non-bender and perfectly fine with it. When his mother was planetside she taught him and his brother self-defense, or as she called it, the secret family chi-blocking. When she wasn’t there, which was becoming a more and more often occurrence as he and his brother matured, he alternated between practicing with his brother and the punching bag in the barn. And, occasionally, Frank.

Frank was the earthbender that Jim’s mother had married a few years back, although Jim refused to acknowledge the man as his step-father. As a mediocre earthbender and functional metalbender he was able to find work at Riverside’s shipyard, something that Jim was only glad for because it meant that he worked long hours and occasionally the night shift; it Jim’s opinion that the longer he was away from the house, the better.

When he was at home Frank liked to be left alone, but as Jim was one of those kids who had a problem with sitting still that rarely happened. This led to many a shouting match and the occasional thrown clod of dirt, and when their arguments deteriorated to bending Frank only ever became more enraged because Jim dodged everything he threw at him.

The one time that Frank actually got up off his sorry ass to chase after Jim was the first time that Jim ever chi-blocked someone who wasn’t his mother or his brother. He stood there in the aftermath, frozen and scared as he stared at Frank where he’d fallen. He shook it off real quick though, and did the only thing he could think of to get as far away as possible: he stole his Frank’s car and drove off in a storm of dust.

And, well, we all know what happened next.

 

###

 

“But _Mom_ ,” Jim argued, drawing out the “o” sound for as long as he had a breath. “You can’t just ship me off-planet because --”

“Because you broke a half-dozen traffic laws, or because you chi-blocked your legal guardian into near-paralysis?”

They were waiting for the next shuttle out of Riverside, Jim, his mother and his brother. While Jim and his mother argued in their seats, Sam sat at the opposite end of the bench, reading on his padd and pretending that he wasn't listening to every word.

“It wasn’t like it was permanent,” Jim muttered. “Couldn’t I just stay with Grandpa Tiberius?”

Winona shook her head. “Tiberius is way too old to be chasing after the likes of you and your brother, and no, don’t waste your breath and say you’d behave for him because you know you wouldn’t.”

Jim exhaled forcefully, knowing that she was right but too proud to admit it.

“Now listen,” Winona said, moving out of her seat to kneel in front of Jim. From there she looked him in the eye and continued, “I know that Frank was… not the best, for you or your brother, and that’s why I’m not asking you to go back to live with him.” Left unanswered was the question of whether he’d even take them back.

“But your father’s brother, Peter, and his wife are so excited to have you with them. Peter’s wanted to reconnect with you and Sam for a long time, but between his work and mine things have never really worked out until now.”

“Yeah, now that he’s moving to the ass-end of--”

“ _Language_ . _”_

“--nowhere to help govern some genius’ crack-plan of a colony.” Jim finished, ignoring his mother’s admonishment.

“The Tarsus IV colony is the product of nearly a _decade_ of work,” Winona explained. “While every other colony has been heavily skewed towards benders or nonbenders, Tarsus is the first of its kind to put equal parts benders and nonbenders together, and within that equal parts benders of each element. You and your brother are getting the opportunity of a lifetime to get to be a part of the Tarsus IV experiment: if all goes well, it could become the standard model for Terran colonies for decades to come.”

“I don't _wanna_ be a part of an experiment,” Jim sighed. “And I don’t know why we can’t just stay with you, either, Mom. Why can't you just stay home?”

This time it was Winona’s turn to sigh. “For one thing, Starfleet’s my job. And space is dangerous; it's not a place for little boys to be running around.”

Jim mumbled something about not being a little boy, but his mother chose to ignore it.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Jim.” Winona added softly. “There's something special about space, and maybe you'll see it on your way to Tarsus. Out there in the black, it's easier to see the infinite mysteries of the universe. They're just lying there at your feet, waiting to be discovered.”

What she didn’t say was what George had always said: that being out in the black was kind of addicting, too. That the longer you spent out there, the more restless you got when you spent any real length of time planetside. She’d tried, long and hard, to shake that restlessness, for the sake of her boys, but she’d never quite managed.

Jim nodded silently, taking in her words. He'd always known that his mother loved him (and maybe that should have been item number four on his List of Things James Tiberius Kirk Knew To Be True), but given the choice between Iowa and the great unknown, he knew she'd choose space every single time. He knew it wasn't anything personal, either, but it hurt all the same. And that hurt was why his mother’s love would never be on his short List, because while he knew she loved him, as long as she kept going back he wasn’t sure that she loved him more than space.

There was an announcement over the speakers calling for their shuttle to board, and Sam appeared at Winona’s side, backpack slung over one shoulder and padd in hand. The three of them were taking the same shuttle to San Francisco, although Winona would stay in the Bay Area for the next few days to work on her ship while Sam and Jim would leave on the shuttle for Tarsus with their aunt and uncle that night.

“Is he done complaining yet?” Sam asked Winona.

“He’s right here, you know,” Jim answered. “And no, he’s not.”

“Are you really going to be like this all the way to San Francisco?” Winona asked, resigned to a long flight.

“All the way to Tarsus,” Jim promised, and Sam groaned.

“Come on, Jim,” Sam said as Jim finally stood up and the three of them headed for their shuttle. “You know, we’ll be living in the main city with all the rest of the colonists except the ones that look after the crops. There’s going to be a big festival when the last of the colonists get there, and we’re on the next to last shuttle out so we won’t have to wait that long. Think about it: food and music and dancing and a lot of unsuspecting benders that you can use your chi-blocking to mess with.”

“Sam!”

“Right, sorry mom,” Sam apologized, but Jim was already smiling.

“Just give it a chance Jim,” Winona said. “It’s not going to be as bad as you think.”

 

###

 

And, well, we all know what happened there, too. Sam was right: it wasn’t as bad as Jim had thought it would be, but instead much, much worse.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW expained: Frank, Jim's stepfather, throws rocks and dirt at Jim when he's angry. It's stated that nothing ever actually hits Jim because he's able to dodge anything thrown at him, for what that's worth.
> 
> And that's it! Just a few weeks short of year later and this is finished. This chapter, like the last few, was a pain to write, but ultimately I'm happy with it. This fic as a whole is the longest work I've ever published, and I'm thrilled that it's done. 
> 
> Also if you've made it this far, please leave a review! Reviews make my day and as I'm in the middle of my last week of class for the semester, I could really use some cheer right about now.

**Author's Note:**

> If you would be interested in beta'ing future fics in this universe, [message me on tumblr!](http://stellathewriter.tumblr.com/)


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